So, I was messing around with creating surveys through Google Forms and thought it might be fun and informative to make a questionnaire for the CBG community to get an idea of what everyone is doing out there. Just some basic questions about what you're building, playing, buying and selling, and how you're tuning.
I wasn't able to embed the form here, so here's the link:
There's no login required and no personal information is collected. You'll be able to see the results of the survey when you're done and I will update this post with results as we go. I'll also provide the raw data to anyone in spreadsheet form if you're interested in analyzing further. This could be useful information for builders and sellers or anyone who is curious.
So if you're like me and have wondered if GDG is really the king of all tunings, whether 3 strings are more popular than 4, or what kind of pickups most people use, take a few minutes to fill out the form. The more responses the better, so share the link and hopefully we can answer some of these burning question!
RESULTS:
UPDATED 1/18/16: Thanks for the participation everyone! We received 85 responses in the first week. I'm going to leave the polls open going forward so go ahead and take the survey if you haven't already. For those who have taken it, here's a link that should take you to the summary of responses.
Here's the link to the Google Sheet through 1/18/16: (No login required - you should be able to view and download in whatever format you'd like)
Replies
posted my 2 cents Now what do you do with the data?
Good question RTZ. I don't really know to be honest, but you got me looking into it and I did some fuzzy back of the napkin math...
For those questions about how many have you built/sold, I took the middle number in each range and averaged it out. For those who answered 100+, I used 100 to be (very?) conservative. I'm sure the statisticians are cringing right now.
94 people answered and said they've built 2462 guitars. 26 per person.
The average person has been involved in CBGs for 3.6 years and is building at a rate of 12 instruments per year.
Sellers are averaging 14 sales per year.
Kind of interesting. Seems about right to me all things considered. Again, the math is suspect and I'm sure someone with more data mining skills can find something better in there somewhere. I don't know what it all means!
I'm also interested in the tunings. I wasn't surprised that GDG is the king and the vast majority use some variation of 151. DAD comes in second. I guess I was surprised that more folks aren't using other tunings. This seems like a huge area for growth and exploration.
It might have been helpful but more complicated to split it into question sets around builders and players. Only one percent play diddley bows? Fascinating. We are a minority. Was surprised that "World" or other ethnic music wasn't listed as a response option as to musical genre played.
Thank you for putting this together! I just hope that builders don't look at the survey and stop offering diddley bows and chuggers!
I thought there would be more in the diddley/chugger camp too Gordon, and I knew I was forgetting something in the music category!
Very interesting numbers. Thanks for doing this.
I love analyse data, a lot of people are discovering CBG's like me (2 years), but the fretted and electric pickups I don't are expecting.
That surprised me too Marcelo, especially fretted vs. fretless.
Interesting info. Nicely done. Thanks, Todd!
I've updated the original post with links to the survey results. Everyone should be able to view them with no login to Google required. Let me know if there are any issues.
1 of 2 respondents who prefers, makes and plays 5 string CBGs. 1 of 1 respondents who sells/sold mostly 5 string CBGs.
Zero respondents say they buy 5 string CBGs.
Hrmmmm. . .(unnecessarily) explains my lack of commercial success. Hahahaha. I am the home of misfit 5 string, overly heavy, steel tool box guitars.
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